


the past swims into view

by sevensevan



Series: pride month 2018 [15]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Steve Rogers, M/M, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-24 00:22:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14944112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevensevan/pseuds/sevensevan
Summary: Steve spends a lot of time living in the past these days, and he sees Bucky everywhere.





	the past swims into view

**Author's Note:**

> okay this isn't like super focused on steve and bucky's relationship, really. it's more about steve and his feelings about the ice and being in the future than anything. but you can't really write about steve without writing about bucky, and i wanted to write for pride month, so it's a little bit gay. enjoy.

Everything is different now.

That shouldn’t be surprising; it’s been more than half a century, but it still bothers Steve. There’s still an alarm bell going off in his head, the one that started when he woke up in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s faux-forties hospital room, warning him that something is _wrong_ , _everything_ is wrong; nothing is quite how it’s supposed to be. Steve knows exactly why now, and the momentary panic that had set in when he woke up in a world that was _wrong_ ( _God_ , the nurse’s hair, her clothes, the open window with a breeze that smelled of nothing at all; Steve had blamed his panicked escape on the baseball game because it was easier to explain than the sheer vastness of how fundamentally the world has changed) has faded, but still, his instincts whisper to him, telling him to run, to fight, to find out where he is and go _home_.

So he does go home.

Brooklyn is different now, too. Of course it is; Steve knew it would be. But there was some irrational, hopeful part of him that imagined turning a corner and walking right back into 1942, back into five-cent bottles of Coca-cola and bathtubs in kitchens and world fairs and recruitment posters and Bucky.

But Brooklyn is different, now. Steve wanders for hours, through what feels like every side street and alleyway in Brooklyn, and nothing feels familiar. There’s plenty of historic landmarks and such, but it’s all preserved, explained, accompanied with plaques and signs detailing what happened on this street corner, or who this park bench is named after, and all it does is make Steve realize that this isn’t home anymore.

Maybe he doesn’t have a home at all. But if he closes his eyes…

—but no, the air smells different. _Feels_ different, he swears, even though it doesn’t make any sense. His hair is too short and his clothes are too tight and Bucky died in Europe decades ago, and there is no one standing beside Steve, no comforting presence, no familiar voice, no laughing blue eyes or carefully developed swagger. Bucky is gone, and Peggy is fading, and Steve is alone.

He leans against the grey concrete of the building at his back, staring up at the sky before closing his eyes. He ignores the unfamiliar scents of the twenty-first century, ignores the way his jeans are too tight and the waistband too low, ignores the uncomfortably exposed feeling of wearing nothing but a thin t-shirt in public, and closes his eyes and drifts.

Steve spends a lot of time living in the past these days. He thinks about the war sometimes, those months of—he doesn’t want to call it _fun_ , because he wishes more than anything that the war had never happened—of _freedom_ , running wild across Europe with the Commandos, he and Bucky and the best friends either of them ever had besides each other, saving people, fighting Hydra, living and bleeding and almost dying _together_.

He had never felt closer to Bucky. Before the war, he wouldn’t have thought the two of them were _capable_ of being any closer, but the war had allowed a lot of things to be overlooked—the government needed troops, whether they were a little queer or not, so long as they kept their mouths shut about it; besides, no one was about to accuse _Captain America_ of such things—and the Commandos were hardly judgmental.

That’s not to say they were a couple by any definition. No, Steve had been truly, stupidly in love with Peggy, and he wouldn’t have dared to dream of thinking of Bucky in that way back then anyway, but they were _something_. Something that involved sleeping curled around each other every night in the field, holding each other close like they did when they were kids when Steve was sick. Something that involved an almost telepathic understanding of one another. Something that involved, on one occasion, Bucky demanding Steve take his shirt off so he could learn Steve’s new body the way he knew his old one.

Something rather undefinable, really.

Steve opens his eyes, lowering his gaze to the alien streets of Brooklyn once more. Masses of people walk the sidewalks, modern cars that still look strange to him fill the streets. Across the street, a few teenagers are skateboarding. One of them whoops with glee, high-fiving his friend, and for a moment—Steve’s heart leaps into his throat—he looks just like Bucky. Then he blinks, and his hair is too light and his skin is just a bit too dark and it’s all wrong but _God_ , Steve could’ve sworn Bucky was there only moments ago.

It’s not the last time he sees Bucky. Steve starts seeing him _everywhere_. On the way back to the apartment S.H.I.E.L.D. rents for him, he sees Bucky in a tired-looking twenty-something, carrying a backpack and looking half-ready to pass out. He sees him in the twin boys, no more than twelve or thirteen, who ask him for his autograph. He sees him in a man who drives past on a motorcycle, whipping in and out of traffic, dark hair streaming behind him.

That one doesn’t make much sense to Steve. Bucky’s hair had never been that long; he’d hated the way it got wavy and out of control. Or at least, he had until girls started complimenting him on it.

Baristas, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, strangers on the street, they all start looking like him. Steve dreams of big band music and cigarette smoke (they don’t let him smoke anymore, the S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors say it’s bad for him) and Bucky, and he buys a record player from a vintage shop and sneaks smokes whenever he can and sees Bucky in everything, everywhere, always.

Steve tells his S.H.I.E.L.D. therapist about it, once. The therapist is a nice woman, older (still younger than Steve, who looks young and is old and still wakes up in the middle of the night sometimes, ready to take over watch from Gabe), soft-spoken, never gets frustrated with Steve even when he spends hours deflecting or staring out the window in silence. She tells him that brains are complicated things, that people see what they want to see, and Steve nods politely, pretends to agree with her.

Truth is, Bucky’s been there for every good thing that’s ever happened to Steve. Late, sometimes, on account of things like being a POW when Steve became Captain America (really became Captain America, not an idiot fumbling through dance steps on stage), but _there_ , always. And now, every good thing, every smiling stranger, every spot of happiness in the everyday lives of the people around Steve feels like it belongs to Bucky. Like wherever he is, Bucky is still showing Steve all the good in the world, still showing him what he’s fighting for, still keeping him grounded.

Steve smokes on his balcony when he gets home from therapy, and he swears he can hear Bucky’s voice in his head, indistinct but familiar. The actual words are incoherent, but a Brooklyn accent punctuates every syllable.

It sounds like home.

Halfway around the world, in a nameless city, on the hunt for a meaningless target, the Winter Soldier catches a whiff of cigarette smoke. He pauses for a fraction of a second, unnoticeable to anyone else, and somewhere in a mind unused to thinking, he wonders why the scent feels familiar.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked it! i'm writing a fic a day for pride month, and i'm taking any and all lgbtq prompts through the end of june. leave a comment or send me an ask on tumblr @daisys-quake. leave a comment and kudos if you enjoyed.


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